


Women's Work (II)

by spemhabemus



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Coming of Age, F/F, Gen, Psychology, Sexuality, Strong Female Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-26 00:08:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1667507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spemhabemus/pseuds/spemhabemus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate Heightmeyer sees Atlantis from a different perspective.  She is the voice of reason behind the daily chaos, the note of stability amongst the cacophony of crisis.  Kate's story intertwines her life pre-Atlantis with her experience as the resident psychologist, witnessing her fellow women's triumphs and insecurities, sharing in their victories and defeats, in the little moments that build the Atlantis mission into what it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Women's Work (II)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Women's Work](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1667216) by [mific](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mific/pseuds/mific). 



Part of my job was to interview prospective new personnel to make sure they were psychologically fit to work on Atlantis.

It took me many months to calibrate which traits would allow the person to pass this test, and which traits would cause them to fail.

In previous positions, like when I interviewed candidates for clinical psychology programs, markers considered positive were now, in a different context, negative. When I looked for future therapists, I wanted them to have a large and diverse network of friends. If they intended to specialize in marriage counseling, they didn’t have to be married, but they needed to have experienced many successful romantic relationships. Having a family and speaking positively about work-life balance generally meant that person was stable. Preference toward teamwork was absolutely essential.

Anyone who had a family and a close network of friends almost certainly self-selected out of Atlantis interviews, but the few that applied anyway were weeded out almost immediately.

I was told to look for loners that _could_ work on a team, but needed to be able to figure their way out of a situation by themselves. Most of the candidates I interviewed were trying to run away from something rather than seek something out. At first I tried to eliminate as many of these people as possible, but I quickly realized that, given the parameters I had to work within, that was not realistic.

So we ended up with a team of detached, non-empathetic, grudge-holding failures at romantic and social relationships. On top of that, every last one of them had astoundingly high IQ’s, making them prone to depression.

I loved all of them.

I loved hearing the stories of those who did not pretend to be perfect, like the clinical psychologist interviewees who thought that I, a highly trained psychiatrist, for some reason could not see through their carefully constructed versions of reality. People who had experienced normal loss and grief and guilt, who easily would have passed all my tests had they simply been honest with me, were disqualified because they attempted to deny their universal normalcy.

One cannot treat a patient if one cannot relate to them.

I talked to Elizabeth Weir many times, but she always avoided giving me any reason to analyze her. That is not to say that I couldn’t very easily do so, just that she was not a willing participant. I didn’t conduct her initial interview, or any of the others who had such high security clearance. Rodney McKay, in particular, probably would not have passed my assessment in those early days, yet he was one of the most invaluable team members.

That just showed that imperfection was preferential. Of all the traits I looked for in candidates, the number one trait was learning from one’s own mistakes. If someone had come out of a terrible relationship and demonstrated that they would never seek out a person like that again…if someone was caught stealing another person’s academic thesis and went on to forge their own research…these stories were the ones that I listened for most closely. I wanted to hear their failures so I could hear how their successes directly stemmed from their mistakes.

I knew Elizabeth Weir was unable to forgive herself for failures, and that was why she continually made better choices, and was one of the strongest leaders I ever met. She did not show, outright, how hard she was on herself. In fact, she did not have any self-loathing, the kind that spilled from Rodney McKay’s and Dr. Kavanaugh’s very pores. She believed in herself, but her personal best was rarely up to her own standards. Each time she succeeded, she raised the bar even higher for next time. It was fascinating, how she was simultaneously unable to give herself credit for doing a good job, and maintain her focus instead of taking the inevitable step back most people need to take when a situation does not pan out as planned. She stuck to her plans, even if she started to doubt them halfway through, to maintain the consistency a leader must have.

I knew she had failed at maintaining a love life, several times. Again, she did not need to tell me this. It was implicit in her actions. She carried her past relationships with her, and they constantly cautioned her. Although she tried to brush them aside, I could tell that she deeply cared about others, and was often concerned about those she hurt in the past. She did not mourn love from her side, but from the perspective of the one whose heart she had broken, whose reaction she could not possibly know over such a distance, and that uncertainty ate away at her during quieter moments.

Carson insisted I talk to Elizabeth after the incident when she encountered her ten thousand-year-old self, and had, essentially, witnessed herself dying.

I could not imagine what each of the Elizabeths had felt, to experience a timeline in which so many missed opportunities came to fruition just beyond the other’s reach. The older Elizabeth had experienced living amongst Ancients, and the younger Elizabeth…well, she had lived. She had her Atlantis with her own team members in her own time, and a future ahead of her that the older Elizabeth had sacrificed.

Normally when I ask someone to tell me about themselves, they start off by telling me that they have a family, or a dog, or perhaps where they went to school or what they do as a career.

When I sat across from Elizabeth in the mess hall and told her I wanted to get to know her better, my attempt at a therapy session in the guise of an off-the-record chat, the first fact she told me was that she was named after Queen Elizabeth I, whom her mother fancied. The Freudian part of my training immediately leapt to associate Elizabeth Weir with the so-called “Virgin Queen”, who would not let sexuality get in the way of her ruling the throne.

“Interesting, because I was named after Catherine of Aragon,” I said.

Elizabeth’s eyes lit up, and then she began to laugh.

Actually, I was named after my great-aunt Katherine.

But I had broken the ice.

I found out that her indecisiveness had led to a well-rounded education. She had first wanted to become a lawyer, and studied philosophy and Latin during her undergraduate years, which then led to an interest in classics, Greek, and mythology. While taking a class on ancient archaeology, she became fascinated with anthropology, which led to a course in social work, which didn’t engage her as much as she thought it would, but led her back to an interest in becoming a human rights advocate and going to law school. She ended up double majoring in anthropology and political science with a minor in history and a concentration in Latin. She then went on to earn a Master’s degree in International Relations with a focus on diplomacy, and a Ph.D. in Political Science with a focus on international diplomacy, and somehow her education ended up being the perfect cocktail to catapult her to leading the Atlantis mission.

“I was so curious about the world that I wanted to uncover it all,” she said. “And even beyond the world. I was interesting in astronomy as a kid, but I was never good at the hard sciences.”

“And now here we are,” I smiled as I bit into an apple.

“Yes,” she said, determination stamped on her face, “here we all are.”

I knew then that I didn’t have to worry about Elizabeth facing post-traumatic stress.   In fact, plucking through her brain may have been a waste of my time. It was far more interesting to let her reveal herself to us, piece by piece, as she chose to do so.

 

I often reflect on why I am so interested in relationship dynamics, when I hardly had any experience with “normal” relationships myself. I say normal both in the sense of hetero-normative and dating culture. My parents’ relationship certainly was not one to be modeled. I knew they had their problems, and from the way they treated each other at the breakfast table, fought often, but they never brought their issues to the public. They never really expressed any form of sentiment to each other at all. I can probably count the number of times I saw them kiss each other on the cheek.

Laura Cadman reminded me of why I ventured into my first couples therapy course during undergrad.

A few weeks after the body-sharing incident, Laura came to my office and slumped into the chair opposite mine, raising her shoulders resignedly. “I have a little problem,” she said. “One of my team members has threatened to tell Major Sheppard that I am trading vacation days for sex.”

“Is this true?” I asked.

She laughed. “Are you serious? I wouldn’t give up vacation days for a million dollars. I’ve been working twelve hour or more days for…I don’t even know how long. Weeks straight. No breaks.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about,” I assured her.

“Except my reputation. Which I usually don’t concern myself with. But.” Laura straightened in her chair, gripping the arm rest. “I was caught snogging one of the Marines.”

“And?” I prompted.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” she sniffed.

“So it was a woman,” I clarified.

“Yes.”

“I doubt Major Sheppard will concern himself with that too much,” I said.

She sighed. “It’s not really Major Sheppard I’m worried about. This…person is big on gaining the upper hand. So if going to my military commander doesn’t achieve the result they want, they’re going to tell my parents. And let me just say, yes, a thirty-year-old woman shouldn’t give a damn what her parents think about her perceived sexuality, but I’m more worried about my parents’ well-being. They were like first-generation helicopter parents, you know, walking me to school even when I was fourteen, refusing to drop me off at the mall alone, looking over my shoulder when I wrote in my diary. They freaked out about me being deployed, and I don’t need yet another thing to freak them out. Especially since I’m not even gay.”

“I understand your concern, but don’t you think you should encourage your parents to accept your life choices?” I asked. “And, Laura, are you asking me for advice about how to deal with your parents, or how to deal with your sexuality?”

“My sexuality doesn’t need to be dealt with. I’m fine with it. I just want this team member to stop bugging me about it,” she said. “So many people want to put everything into black and white terms, but it’s not like that. They should know, working here, how many shades of gray there are. But when it comes to sex, you’re either gay or straight. When it comes to monogamy, you’re either chaste or a slut. Since I’m sure you’ve heard all about many of our personnel’s sex lives, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.”

“A close community like this is the perfect environment to foster rumors,” I told her. “People will prey on any weaknesses they can find. And I’m sure it’s hard to find weaknesses in you.” I smiled. “I think it’s safe to say this team member is making empty threats.”

“They have access to a lot more information than you would guess,” she said.

“What do they want from you?” I asked.

“They want to step on as many people as they need to to get promoted, because they know they don’t have what it takes.”

“And what are you going to do to stop that from happening?” I asked.

“I was hoping you could give me some pointers,” she said. “You know, to disarm them. Verbally. Not physically. I could handle that on my own just fine.”

I couldn’t help laughing at Laura’s candor. Our personalities had always jived. We had also dealt with similar issues, it seemed.

I helped many patients who had a difficult time coming out to their parents and friends. They would often deny their homosexuality, or insist they could hide it forever, or even “fix” it. Some of them identified as bisexual, and couldn’t find a middle ground between their non-accepting straight peers, and their sometimes skeptical gay peers.

Then there were people like Laura Cadman and me, who didn’t identify as any sexuality, and didn’t feel the need to.

I was never comfortable with labels like “boyfriend” or “girlfriend”. Maybe that’s why I am romantically inexperienced. Every time I got close to someone, I would end the potential relationship once they wanted to become exclusive.

I was very experienced with heartbreaks.

My first was in high school, right after I scraped up the money for my first car by working as a waitress after school and on weekends. I offered to give all my friends a ride home from school, even those who lived a five-minute walk away, just because I could.

My best friend, Carolyn, kissed me while we were sitting in my hot car in her driveway. She was locked out of the house and waiting for her mom to come home from work. I had offered to wait with her. It was one of the hottest days in September, and my car had no air conditioning, but it was better than waiting alone.

My immediate response was to pull away from her. But in response to my startled expression, she just smiled. She had a small gap between her two front teeth, freckles all across the bridge of her nose, and eyes so light blue that they seemed translucent. Her hair was pulled back and pieces of it were matted to her slightly sweaty forehead. She had slipped off her shoes and her bare feet rested casually on my dashboard, her toes sloppily painted purple. Something about her made me see her differently all of a sudden. Instead of her being my pal, she was now the girl who had caused the first knot of excitement in my stomach I ever had when thinking about a kiss.

So I kissed her back.

I had kissed a few boys at parties. High school boys pulled you into them roughly, not controlling their tongues, their hands as close to your butt as you dared let them. High school boys kissed deeply, their teeth clashing against yours in an attempt to ram themselves into you as far as possible. High school boys tried to put their hands inside your bra.

Carolyn’s kiss was sweet, light but meaningful, innocent but full of real passion.

I fell in love with kissing her.

I was not in love with _her_ , but something new bloomed between us. We would kiss whenever we were alone. I never felt like I needed to explore her body. After all, I knew what was there. I looked the same as she did.

Eventually, though, she wanted more.

We were laying in my bed, our bare legs entangled, as we often had done even before the kiss, and watching the TV my parents allowed me to have in my room. At the commercial break, Carolyn rolled on top of her and her lips met mine. I felt slightly smothered, but I returned the kiss.

Then her hands started tracing my ribs, and she trailed her mouth down my body, like I had seen men do in so many romantic movies. When she got to the bottom of my shirt, she pulled it up and started kissing – no, biting – my bare stomach.

“Hey, whatcha doing down there?” I asked, trying not to push her away.

She looked up at me, her tongue poised over my belly button. “Feels good, right?”

“Not really,” I said, pulling my shirt down and forcing her to back off.

“Sorry.” Carolyn frowned dramatically. “I thought you would be cool with it.”

“I…I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think I am.”

“I mean, we’ve been dating for…”

“Dating?” I interrupted her.

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s what we’re doing, right? Or are you going with someone else?”

“No,” I said. “But we’re friends, we’re not…girlfriends or whatever.”

“So making out with me apparently doesn’t constitute being my girlfriend. Okay.” Carolyn took a deep breath. “Why did you keep doing it?”

“Because it felt good,” I said.

Carolyn covered her face with her hands. “Wow. Okay. So you don’t have to answer this, but are you a lesbian or am I totally misinterpreting this whole thing?”

“I haven’t really thought about it. But I guess, no, I’m not a lesbian,” I said quietly.

“Well.” Carolyn leapt off my bed and slipped her shoes on. “I am. So I hope that doesn’t make you uncomfortable since you’re, you know, not.”

“It doesn’t,” I said. “I’m just…I don’t want to be your girlfriend. Or anyone’s girlfriend. I just thought we were having fun.”

“I can’t do this, then,” she said. “I feel like an idiot.”

“Cal, please, I still want to be friends,” I said, following her around my room as she collected her purse.

“I thought I could finally have a real relationship, but all the girls I try to get together with keep insisting they’re straight. What the hell?” She glared at me with a ferocity I had never seen before.

“I’m sorry. I wish I had known that you were serious about it before…”

“Before I made all the same moves on you that a guy who wanted to get in your pants would have made,” she said. “I see. I guess I just wasn’t obvious enough about it. I should have just slipped you a roofie or something.”

“Come on,” I said. “It’s different because we were friends. Are friends.”

“It’s cool if you want to look at it like that, but I’m just going to find someone who’s not afraid to fuck another woman.” Carolyn walked out of my room without allowing me a chance to respond.

We had had fights before, but none of them were over something so serious. I had no idea how to react. I was stunned. Then hurt. Then I felt like I had lost something vital.

She never brought up our conversation again, and as far as I know, didn’t tell any of our friends about it, which I appreciated. We still hung out with some of the same people, but never alone.

After that, I had a difficult time letting others get close to me. I had no interest in having a boyfriend in college, despite my dad and brothers teasing me about it. I dated some guys casually, but never for more than a few months, and didn’t have anything close to a relationship until I was well into my twenties.

I also never experimented with women again, not even allowing myself to think about it as a possibility. Sometimes I regretted that, and wondered if I could have settled down with someone of my own gender. But I remained a loner, for better or worse. My detachment from the dating world helped me step outside the situations couples came to me with, and work through them to get to the root of the problem. I think I was fascinated by things I could never truly understand, which is part of what drew me to the Atlantis mission in the first place – a sense of not knowing, and a desire to delve into something I could never possibly figure out.

But I was not immune to the ethical stupidity that sometimes encroached upon the desperate. The job on Atlantis was difficult. I had the most freedom I had had at any job, but with that came tiring decisions. Sometimes, I had to report my patients’ behavior to Dr. Weir or even the IOA if I believed they were going to harm themselves or someone else. I was directly responsible for removing a few people from their posts. Seeing someone I and many others had begun to think of their family be escorted back to Earth, kicking and screaming at times, was heartbreaking. The amount of substance abuse I dealt with was also staggering. Situations far worse than Lieutenant Ford’s Wraith enzyme addiction arose.

I found myself becoming strangely attracted to a scientist on Rodney’s team. Rodney had referred him to me for a routine psych evaluation before his first off-world mission, and afterwards we had become lukewarm friends and had dinner together several times. Nothing crossed professional boundaries for a few weeks, and then, inexplicably, I stopped caring about professional boundaries and started prowling after him. It was not until after we engaged in loud, desperate, morally reprehensible, primitive sex for three nights in a row that I began to suspect drugs had been involved. The scientist, whose name I am not comfortable sharing even in the most intimate company, went off-world, and I began to experience withdrawal symptoms.

At first I thought I had the flu and worked through it for a couple of days. Then I woke up in the middle of the night laying on my floor, not having remembered how I got there, and finding that I had clawed the tiles hard enough to leave light scratch marks and bloody fingertips. I felt a desperate sort of hunger for something, a primordial urge to seek something out, and when I scanned my brain to try to figure out what it was and could not find the answer, I almost hyper-ventilated in desperation, just barely resisting the urge to scream my throat raw.

As I tried to stand up, my jaw tingled with nausea and embers of heat burned sickeningly in my stomach. The room seemed to pitch as if the city were bobbing up and down on the water, but I managed to drag myself into the bathroom as my dinner rose in my throat. Between bouts of vomiting, I lay on the floor, willing it to stop undulating beneath me, but there was no relief; I broke into a sweat, then became chilled, trembling violently. When it seemed my stomach was finally empty, I realized I couldn't be suffering from an ordinary stomach flu. I had never felt this wretched before, and I had witnessed enough patients in drug withdrawal to recognize the symptoms. Leaning my clammy forehead against the cold marble wall and wondering if I could even stand, I realized I had left my ear piece by the sink while I was taking a shower the night before. I told Dr. Weir I was too sick to come to work, then paged the infirmary, my hands trembling so badly I dropped the ear piece several times. Marie responded and came to my quarters, by herself, with an IV drip. She found me in a shaking, sobbing heap, still on the bathroom floor, and helped me into a wheelchair and then into my bed. I appreciated her sensitivity to my privacy, although I certainly didn’t feel like I deserved it at that point.

I had to disclose everything surrounding the last several weeks to her, because by that point I had worked through the haze to the most probable scenario, which was that the scientist was on some drug that had transmitted its effects to me. It must have been similar to the herb Lucius Lavin had access to, except with much worse withdrawal effects. When I retrospectively analyzed his behavior, I began to see that he had displayed many symptoms of an addiction, which I had probably missed because by that point, I was also under the influence.

“I’m so embarrassed I let this happen,” I told Marie, almost crying at this point due to pain and exhaustion. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she assured me. “You did the right thing.”

“I only hope my ability to do my job wasn’t impaired too much,” I said. “I should probably see everyone I’ve given any advice to and issue them an apology.”

“Don’t worry about that right now. What’s important is figuring out what treatment you need and if anyone else besides him needs it.” She drew a vial of blood from my arm.

“Were you able to contact him? Get him back to Atlantis?” I asked.

Marie shook her head. “I’m not sure. But the proper people have been informed. You have no responsibility in his choices.”

“Did you notice me acting any differently?” I asked her. We had eaten lunch together a few times since I had been courting the scientist; well, the five minutes she could spare for lunch.

“No,” she replied.

Most of the nausea was gone now, and I turned my attention toward that desperate craving in my head, like a dog chasing its own tail. “I need…something to help me come down off it,” I moaned. “I feel like I’m about to claw my face off.”

Marie rested a hand gently on my shoulder. “Kate, I gave you a Naltrexone injection. It should help a little. But without knowing the type of drug this is, I’m not sure I should give you anything else.”

“I know,” I said.

“Let me draw a bath for you,” Marie offered.

She helped me get into the bathtub and even made me a cup of tea.

“This feels nice,” I said as she propped my head up with a pillow on the faucet. I was glad I had chosen one of the rooms with a bathtub, even though I never take baths.

“I want to make sure you’re okay, since you’re usually the one making sure everyone else is okay,” she said. “Are you all right? Emotionally?”

“I think so.” I sipped at the tea, which coated my stomach with a warmth that made me forget my pounding head for a second.

“We would normally keep you for observation overnight, but it’s a slow day, so I’d rather you rest here and just call me if you need anything,” said Marie.

“I would hug you if I weren’t immersed in water,” I sighed, closing my eyes against a sudden pain.

After she helped me get dressed and back in bed, she left, promising to bring meds every few hours or as needed. She gave me a sleeping pill and I slept the rest of the day.

I had seen doctors pass judgment on drug addicts, but Marie never did. She never treated me, or even the scientist, with anything but concern for our well-being. It turns out he had acquired some kind of love potion - which, upon further examination, had a similar chemical structure to methamphetamine - through a witch doctor, negotiating a deal through an unsuspecting Athosian kid. The love potion was intended for someone else, but I happened to be the first person he came in contact with, so he was stuck with me. He apologized profusely, but I still recommended him for removal due to the inherently dangerous nature of taking potent substances.

I made an effort to eat lunch with Marie more. I liked to be in the company of helpers. Knowing people like her existed made me want to draw out those qualities in everyone I met.

 

Teyla Emmagan lived in a world of men. She was one hell of a match for all of them, yet I could tell that she longed for a close female companion, as I guessed she had once had on Athos. Teyla was not difficult to get to know, but she would give so much of herself that she did not have much time to pursue her own interests. I encouraged her to explore some of her traditions through creativity.

She told me once that she hoped to become a better cook, so I secured the kitchen for two hours one slow afternoon, and Teyla joined me with a variety of native Athosian ingredients, like the tava bean.

“So I’m finally going to try the famous tava bean stew.” I rubbed my hands together as I slipped an apron around my waist.

“Oh, no,” Teyla said. “I would like to try something different. Perhaps a dish that is popular on Earth.”

I laughed. “Well, my specialty is eggplant parmesan,” I said. “I used to make it with my mom.”

Teyla grinned. “I would very much like to try that.”

I eyed the vegetables she had brought. One of them looked like an oblong-shaped rock, pockmarked and non-symmetrical, something a pig might root out from the ground. I sliced it open and a wonderful herbal smell filled the room. “What is this called?” I asked.

“That is the bolo root,” Teyla explained.

“Well then,” I said, “we’ll make bolo root parmesan.”

As Teyla prepared the food, I noticed that she was extremely adept at improvisation. The kitchen had no bread crumbs, or even bread, and Teyla suggested we instead use seeds to mix in with the flour to give the crust a breaded texture. Her instincts were immediate. I could see why she was of such value to Sheppard’s team on their missions. She learned new techniques quickly, and knew how to correct a mistake the instant she made one. I couldn’t help wondering why she claimed she was so terrible at cooking, when she was picking up on it so well.

Teyla ducked her head as she thinly sliced the bolo root. “It is not that I can _not_ cook, but that it is an insult to be adept at too many trades in Athosian culture. It is also an insult to elders when someone makes a meal better than they can.” She smiled.

“I see. So you don’t want to be a triple threat.” I brushed my hands off on my apron.

Teyla cocked her head. “I do not understand what you mean.”

“You’re a woman of many talents. You sing, you lead, you operate weapons and technology. You can do almost anything,” I explained.

Teyla was silent for a moment. Then she said, quietly, “Thank you.”

“My parents always discouraged me from trying new things.” I shook my head. “I think they just wanted to protect me, but in the end, I resented that.”

“Why would they not encourage you to follow your interests?” Teyla asked.

“We didn’t have a lot of money growing up. I have three older brothers. My parents couldn’t afford to send me to college. Luckily, I got a scholarship,” I said. “Every time I wanted to do anything other than cooking or baking or learning how to sew, they told me it would be a waste of money. I remember I wanted to learn how to ride a horse, so badly. My best friend owned horses, and she would take me to the stable sometimes. They’re such beautiful animals. But my parents just wanted me to learn how to be a homemaker and marry a wealthy man and be set for life.” I chuckled.

“Athosians encourage self-sufficiency,” said Teyla.

“Yes. I can see that.” I looked around. “It looks like we’re almost done here. We just need to put it in the oven.”

When our meal was prepared, we sat down at a table in the abandoned mess hall – it was almost nine o’clock at night – and ate without talking much. The food tasted nothing like eggplant parmesan, but it was still good. “This should become a Pegasus staple,” I joked.

We made plans to have a ladies’ night, something we hadn’t done in far too long. Then we went to bed.

 

I dreamed about riding a horse through the countryside. The horse had no saddle. I gripped its mane fiercely as the wind whipped my own hair against my face. My boots dug into the horse’s side, spurring him to gallop faster and faster. The harder I bumped over the open grass, the bigger my smile became. Then I closed my eyes and let the horse carry me where it wanted.

 

That was right before Carson died. And, shortly after that, Dr. Weir was taken by the Replicators. I saw a lot of personnel, people who normally didn’t come to see me, but had been so affected by the recent tragedies that they felt they had nowhere else to go. Several told me they had applied for transfers back to Earth, and I didn’t blame them. Others had gleaned inspiration from fear. They had begun pursuing hobbies, or had made efforts to communicate with their families more, or asked someone out on a date, realizing life was too short to take for granted.

Jennifer Keller came to me just one day after she took over for Carson. I questioned Dr. Weir’s choice, because Dr. Keller was so young, and seemed more naïve than many of the cynical team members surrounding her.

“I’m having trouble sleeping,” she said, almost as soon as she sat down across from me.

“Are you taking anything for it?” I asked.

She nodded. “It doesn’t do much, of course. I think something in the back of my mind is constantly reminding me I have to be on-call, so I just stay awake.”

I smirked.

“What?” Jennifer asked, her eyes widening.

“I just find it interesting that you’re the one who prescribes pills, and I’m the one who analyzes the mind, but you’re doing a fine job of analyzing yourself.”

“You can prescribe pills, too,” she said.

“I can. But I usually don’t.” I crossed one leg over the other. “So what are you hoping to accomplish?”

“I don’t know if I can do this,” she admitted. “I’ve never been in a position where I have to make all the important decisions.”

“But you do anyway,” I said.

She spread her palms out in front of her. “I have no choice.”

“Then how come you believe you’re not capable of it?” I asked.

“I think it’s more a question of if I’m capable of doing it well.”

“You mean like Carson.”

“I…suppose.”

“Jennifer, Carson was excellent at what he did. But that doesn’t mean he always chose the right way, or the only way, to do things,” I said.

“I know,” Jennifer admitted. “I guess I’m hoping to somehow get rid of those doubts.”

“The only person capable of taking away the doubts is you,” I told her. “And not with the help of medications,” I added. “That was one problem I had with Carson. He treated the symptoms, not the cause.”

“Sometimes that’s the only choice we have,” Jennifer said.

“Sometimes. But I’ve seen plenty of insomnia, depression, and anxiety that was virtually unchecked because people thought taking their medications would make those things go away, and they didn’t.”

“That’s why we have you.” Jennifer smiled.

“You’re not alone,” I assured her. “We can always learn from those around us, even if they’re not the ones making the final decisions. Remember that. But also remember that you do need to make the decisions, and stand by them, in order to build everyone’s trust.”

“Fake it until I make it,” Jennifer muttered.

“Something like that,” I said.

 

I often wondered if my words fell on deaf ears. The Atlantis personnel were a tough bunch. Most of them didn’t want real guidance; they only wanted assurance that they “weren’t crazy”. Some of them did experience mental breakdowns, and had to be transferred back to Earth. But the ones who remained were unshakable.

 

Jennifer came to me once more with doubts, after she had reactivated Dr. Weir’s nanites, which led to her capture on the Replicators’ home world.

“This time I know I made the wrong decision,” Jennifer said. “Sheppard is pissed at me. He is going to get me fired.”

“Your first obligation is to preserve life,” I reminded her. “So that’s what you did.”

She shook her head and bit her lip. “That’s not how it ended up.”

“Jennifer, when you’re dealing with issues like we do in the Pegasus galaxy, there’s no precedent for how it should be handled,” I said. “You used the tools you had available to you. Anyone would have done the same. I myself had to make a quality of life decision…about my mother. I really shouldn’t have been the one making the decision, but my dad was a wreck. He wanted to keep my mom lucid for as long as possible. He didn’t want her to forget him. So I used my connections to get her into an experimental drug trial. It ended up making her memory worse and accelerating her condition instead of helping it.”

Jennifer stared at me. “Oh, my God.”

“It’s something I’ll never forgive myself for, and I had to talk to someone for some months afterwards. I almost dropped out of my psychiatry rotation right then.” I stared down at my hands, wondering why I was telling her this. All these years later, fire surged through my chest and my heart threatened to burst.

As I walked Jennifer out of my office, she turned and gave me a hug. Her embrace felt genuine, the transfer of concern from one scared person to another. It reminded me of my mom, in some strange way.

 

“I’m sorry, Kate.”

I felt someone’s fingers brush through my hair, and rolled over toward the voice, but saw no one.

“Hello?” I said, sitting up in bed and peering into the darkness.

The room was silent.

I stepped out of bed and the cool floor stung my feet. Making my way to the window, I could feel someone walking beside me, but no one was there. I waved my hand in front of the light sensor, but the lights didn’t come on.

“I’m sorry,” the voice repeated, and a prickle at the back of my spine crawled its way toward my head as I recognized the voice.

“Mom.”

“I didn’t want it to end up this way, Kate.”

“What are you talking about?” I whirled around in all directions, knowing I wouldn’t see anything, but desperate for some sign that all this was real. It didn’t feel like a dream; yet it couldn’t be real. My mother was in a nursing home in Oregon. She had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s when she was only fifty-four years old.

“I wanted you to know I was proud of you.”

I swallowed. “I know you were proud of me, Mom.”

“I told him to help you, and he didn’t.”

“Who?” I asked, although I had a feeling I knew the answer.

For a moment, the room was silent again, and I tried desperately to turn the lights on, but only the few lights shining through windows across the pier from my quarters lit patches on the floor.

The voice reverberated in my head, and all around me. “Your father.”

“It’s okay, Mom,” I said, gripping the wall.

“I wanted you to know that I would have helped you.”

“Mom, you were…you are…sick.” I started to feel dizzy. The room was spinning. It really _was_ spinning, the view outside my window changing to the central spire. My door opened of its own accord, and I could see the gate room just outside.

“No,” I said.

“You have to fight him, Kate.”

“It’s too late.”

Now the gate room spun. The symbols lit up, dialing a gate address, and then the gate disappeared and was replaced by a small, dark room, furnished with two bookshelves, a desk, and a bed, with Joan Jett posters taped to the walls. My first apartment.

“I need that money _tomorrow_ ,” my brother’s voice demanded, and I jumped at the loud sound in my ear, almost dropping the phone that had appeared in my hand.

“You know I don’t have any money, Brett,” I said, the words falling out of my mouth as they had fifteen years ago.

“More than I have,” he spat over the line.

“Stop bothering me,” I said. “Get a second job. You know I can’t help you.”

“You _can_ and you _will_ give me three hundred dollars so I can get my car fixed and _get_ another goddamned job,” he said.

“Why won’t Dad help you?” I asked.

“You know why.” His voice was so bitter, it sounded as if he were choking on a sob.

“He has to take care of Mom first. You know that,” I said.

“He doesn’t even give a shit about any of us,” Brett said. “He never has.”

“I’m not going to talk about this. I have a test tomorrow. I need to sleep.”

“Oh, Jesus, Kate, I have half a gallon of expired milk in my refrigerator and I haven’t eaten anything in two days. I swear to God I’m broke,” Brett told me.

“If you need food, I’ll get you some, but I can’t give you money!” I insisted.

“ _I’m going to starve on the streets because of you people_!”

I heard a click, and then the dial tone.

Ten minutes after I climbed into bed, an insistent knock sounded at my door.

I flung the door open, yelling even before I saw who was on the other side, “How did you get here?”

“Give me the money.”

“You said you needed to get your car fixed. How did you get here?”

“Shut up.” Brett pushed me aside and stormed into my apartment, looking around briefly before opening my refrigerator. “Goddammit, do you even eat, skinny? You don’t have shit in here.”

I opened a cabinet and gave him a granola bar. He tore the packaging off with his teeth and chewed noisily.

“I could call the police on you,” I said quietly, folding my arms and leaning against my counter.

“Oh, boo hoo,” he said, crumpling the wrapper and tossing it on the floor. “Where’s your money?”

“You think I just keep wads of cash in my apartment?” I asked.

He turned into my bedroom and started dismantling anything he could find, rummaging through my books and papers.

I picked up the cordless phone and slipped it under my shirt, then started dialing my dad’s number once I reached my door.

“What?” he answered.

“Dad, it’s me. Brett’s over here trying to get money from me,” I said.

“It’s eleven-thirty.”

“I know what time it is, Dad! Can you come over here and do something?”

“Give your brother some money,” he told me.

“I can’t. I don’t have any.” I searched the parking lot for Brett’s car and couldn’t see it anywhere.

“You got a good stipend, you told Mom about it.”

“That doesn’t mean I have anything to spare,” I said.

“I can’t help you, honey.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone approaching. I recognized him as one of Brett’s friends. He must have given Brett a ride.

He looked at me and the corner of his mouth turned up. “Can I use your bathroom?”

“No,” I said, shutting the door behind me.

He caught the door as it was closing and rushed past me into the apartment.

“Wait!” I yelled. “Brett! Dad!” I screamed into the phone. “Dad, please come over here, I’m scared.”

“He’s your brother, Kate.”

“One of his friends is here and they’re both tearing my place apart looking for money!” I followed Brett’s friend, cradling the phone to my ear.

He did go into my bathroom, but came out a few seconds later, holding the watch my mom had given me for my high school graduation.

“Hey Brett, can’t we sell this or something?” he said.

I heard Brett’s voice from my room. “Hey, yeah.”

“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled, walking into my bedroom, where all my shelves had been completely emptied of their contents. “I’m calling the police!” Realizing my dad was still on the phone, I said, “Dad, they’re freaking robbing me!”

“Oh, shut up,” said Brett’s friend, tearing the phone out of my hand. “Mr. Haightmeyer, this is all a misunderstanding. She owed Brett money. We’re just making sure he gets it. I’m just trying to help out my friend here. Yeah, you understand.”

I felt angry tears spring to my eyes.

Brett was stuffing some things into his pocket. From the state of my emptied bathroom cabinets, I surmised he had got our grandmother’s pearl earrings, the gold necklace my dad had given my mom for their wedding anniversary, that she gave me right before her condition started getting bad, and all of my cheap costume jewelry that was worth nothing, but that my bastard of a brother was going to steal from me anyway.

I shoved Brett against my wall, getting ready to hit someone for the first time in my life, and immediately felt his friend’s hands close over my wrists and pull me back.

“HELP!” I shrieked, desperately hoping anyone would hear me.

My phone had been thrown on the ground, and I reached for it with my foot, but now both Brett and his friend were dragging me to my living room and slamming me onto the couch. I knew fighting against them would be useless, but I scratched Brett’s arms anyway while he held me down as his friend emptied my kitchen of all food. Then the two of them ran off.

I followed them into the parking lot, trying to get their license plate number, but I barely saw them speed off before they were gone.

I put my apartment back together, angry thoughts rattling my head into senselessness, and then slept through the night and most of the next day, through my exam.

When I finally bothered to get up, I felt a calm sort of emptiness, like a rain shower clearing the sky into gray nothing. I didn’t bother to call the police. If my own father wasn’t going to help me, I knew no one else would.

I learned from that incident, though. I learned that I didn’t have to be helpless. I took a self-defense class, and my psychology courses helped me come to terms with how to deal with others’ anger and irrationality.

I had half expected Brett to call me the next day, or the day after, or even send an apology through my dad. I wanted to hear him say that he hadn’t eaten in three days, had spent his entire paycheck on rent and bills and paying back a friend he had loaned money from, had his electricity shut off, and wasn’t thinking straight. I wanted him to promise me nothing like this would ever happen again, and acknowledge it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Brett and I hadn’t been close growing up, but he had usually treated me decently.

But I never talked to him again.

And when I sporadically talked to my father, out of a sense of moral obligation that degraded over the years, he tried to pretend like my second oldest brother didn’t exist.

I used this to help my patients deal with non-reactions and lack of closure. My family fell apart after my mom was institutionalized, and each piece blew away in the wind, never to be seen again, not even as a speck against the sky.

We all want answers, but all too often, we don’t get them.

After that day, I knew for sure I wanted to heal others. I couldn’t heal my mom, but maybe someone out there needed my assistance.

“Fight him.” My mother’s words were frantic.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, as the gate room came into focus again.

“Don’t let him win.” Her voice was quieter now.

I heard footsteps coming down the hall, and John Sheppard stood before me, in the commanding stance that let everyone know he owned the room.

“I have a surprise for you,” he said, his eyes on fire.

“John?” I asked, confused at his tone of voice.

“Turn around,” John commanded.

I looked behind me just in time to see my foot dislodge a rock from the cliff I was standing on. It fell for several seconds before silently splashing into the ocean.

“Oh, God,” I said, throwing my arms out to steady myself before I fell over the edge. “How did I get here?”

John grinned. His expression was demonic.

“Colonel Sheppard.” I coughed to clear the fear from my voice, struggling to keep my tone level. “Help me.”

“Help you?” He cocked his head to one side. “You wanted this.”

I shook my head, holding my hand out to signal him not to come any closer, as if he were the one I was trying to talk down from a ledge.

I had often encountered suicidal patients, and would like to think I had saved some of them from succumbing to their dark thoughts. This dream was a cruel joke. I would never kill myself. Although I was surrounded by pain and loss and cruelty, both relayed to me by my patients and seeing first-hand the scary things lurking around the Pegasus galaxy, I valued my life.

I looked down at the ocean, which had hardened into a crystal, its waves forever frozen at their peaks.

“I don’t want to die,” I whispered.

“Then why are you giving up?” he asked. “I’m right here. Come get me.”

“But I can’t – I can’t-” I wobbled on the precipice. My feet were stuck in place. I couldn’t move them. I couldn’t move them forward, anyway. I shuffled backwards an inch, unhindered.

“That’s it,” John urged. “Keep going.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, willing myself with all my might to move forward, away from the edge, but something in me kept telling me to back up.

I didn’t see my life flash before my eyes, possibly because I was still in denial that any of this was even real, and maybe I would wake up a few minutes in my bed with sunlight streaming in over the ocean.

But I did smell my mother’s eggplant parmesan, and see the last peaceful family meal I could remember. My dad was actually smiling, and my brothers made a point to include me in the conversation, as they rarely bothered to do. It was the night before I would drive 700 miles to college in my crappy $400 car on a full-ride, four-year scholarship. I already knew that I would go to medical school someday. And I had made absolutely divine garlic bread that everyone complimented me on. And my parents let me have a glass of red wine, even though I was underage.

I sat in my room that night, having emptied the contents of my closet into a tote bag, and watched the sun set behind the trees, and I felt _full_. Life spread out before me in infinite potential. I would not be like my brothers, who all started working minimum wage jobs after graduating high school, or, in my oldest brother’s case, after dropping out of high school when he was sixteen. A few of them had managed to work their way up to pretty well-paying positions, but they were still doing grunt work. I would not be like my father, who hated his job and resented that he couldn’t give his kids everything he wanted to give them. I would not be like my mother, who thought she had to be a perfect housewife to gain any respect, whom my father had forced to stop working when she had kids out of pride, even though they could have used a second income.

I would _do_ something with my life.

Now here I was, in another galaxy, not allowed to tell my family anything I had accomplished, but…what more could I ask for?

To live.

To be alive.

To breathe.

To let myself explore.

I sprang forward and tackled John Sheppard to the ground. I heard his skull crack against the pavement.

I sat up in bed and opened my eyes, my heart racing, gasping for breath.

“You really think it would be that easy?”

I jumped at John Sheppard’s voice.

“You don’t have the strength.”

“Shut up!” I screamed. “You’re not real!”

“I’m as real as I need to be.”

Then I was standing on the ledge again, trying not to slip and fall, calling desperately to Teyla while John Sheppard prevented her from helping me.

I saw the buildings rise up around me, their colors whirling together, and then…

 

One of my clients was terrified of death, and gruesome images of her own demise and the subsequent afterlife constantly flooded her mind. She was not terminal, as many of my patients were; nor had anyone close to her died in an untimely manner. She was simply afraid of the great unknown.

This patient would say things to me like, “What is the purpose of living if someday I’ll be dead anyway?” I could not console her by encouraging her to leave a mark on the world, to make sure that she was remembered even after she was gone. She did not want to live an extraordinary life. She wanted the seconds to tick away until she faded into oblivion.

Several years later, she killed herself. It turns out death wasn’t what she feared most; it was having no control over her life, letting time carry her forward like a raft on an ocean.

Now I understood that I was dead. I knew I was dreaming, but that I would not wake up. And the lack of control finally choked me.

I didn’t understand why I had failed to prevent myself from falling, even though I had fought so hard.

_Maybe, on some level, you wanted to give up._

That’s what I always told couples whose relationships had failed, or someone who had quit pursuing their dream career that they had dedicated years to obtaining. But I had never thought it about myself.

“You made a sacrifice,” a kind voice explained.

In books and movies, people who die see their loved ones, who escort them to heaven on a silver path. I half expected to see my grandmother when I turned around, although the voice wasn’t right.

Instead, I saw Elizabeth Weir.

“Hi, Kate,” she said. “I know it’s difficult to understand what’s happening to you.”

“I’m dead,” I said. I didn’t dance around it. I knew it was true.

“Not quite,” Elizabeth told me. “We have to do something first. Come on.”

“Are you a Replicator?” I asked as I followed her. I couldn’t tell where we were going, because we weren’t really anywhere in particular. We might have been in a cave. I could tell walls surrounded me, and occasional ripples of light swept over them. I could see perfectly, even though, under normal conditions, I wouldn’t have been able to see much except my own hand in front of my face. It was more a sensation of awareness than actual sight.

“I’m not really sure,” she admitted. “Part of my consciousness broke away, and I’ve been able to connect to people on rare occasions while the other part of me is being integrated into the Replicator network. But the Replicators haven’t fully integrated the rest of me yet, because I can also access their codes and see that parts of their programming are being disrupted from the inside from time to time.”

“You sound very calm about this all,” I remarked.

“Don’t you feel calm?” she asked me.

I let that sink in. I did feel calm, even though I knew I was dead, or close enough. Since I was having an out of body experience, the panicked physiological reactions hadn’t kicked in, so I hadn’t freaked out. It was clinically quite interesting.

“I’ve been listening in on the whales,” Elizabeth explained as we continued walking down a seemingly never-ending void.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“The whales. Remember the whales that swarmed the city to warn us about the coronal mass ejection? I can listen in on their frequencies without the use of a translator. Actually, I can communicate with all kinds of creatures, although I haven’t attempted to communicate with the Wraith. Lieutenant Ford is still alive, by the way. I’ve connected with him.”

“Hm,” I said.

“Here we are.” Elizabeth gestured into a cavernous space lit only by the dull light of an unseen red flame.

I asked the obvious question, “Where are we?”

“This is Dr. Zelenka’s research lab, as far as I can ascertain,” Elizabeth said. “At least, this is where all of his research pops up. I think it may be more like a direct connection to his brain. He has been researching a technology that would allow Atlantis to travel as if it were a Stargate…for the whole city to be transported to another planet, or even another galaxy, through a wormhole. According to Lieutenant Ford’s intelligence, or what I’ve been able to glean from him…he’s not that reliable of a source, but I have reason to believe he is correct about this…they’ll need to use it soon. We can help them complete it.”

I stared at the red space in front of us, and suddenly a sequence of numbers popped into my head, and the phrase “reroute the conduits through the wormhole itself” seemed to just echo in the background. “That is incredible,” I commented.

“You heard it too, then,” Elizabeth said. “So you can help me.”

“Yes. Just tell me what I need to do,” I said.

“I’ve never tried this with anyone else before.” Elizabeth’s face lit up. “I’ve been able to see other people’s thoughts, but I haven’t been able to push my own thoughts into theirs. I think I can do it if they’re distracted enough that they create the space in their mind to be receptive to our input. I’ve seen it nearly happen before.”

I didn’t ask her how she knew it “nearly” happened. She seemed elated that she would finally be able to help Atlantis again, and I didn’t want to spoil her plan.

“I’ve gathered enough intel from the Replicators that would resolve a large missing piece of the wormhole drive equations. Rodney and Radek think they don’t have enough power for the wormhole drive, but the Replicators have unlimited resources and have discovered all sorts of ways around problems like these. My consciousness on the Replicator home world has transferred an important equation to me, and I’m going to give it to Rodney, because I think he’ll be more easily distracted.” She grinned. “Just make him think about Colonel Carter.”

“Of course.” I nodded.

Discovering how to connect to Rodney was an interesting process. Elizabeth had perfected the art, but I didn’t expect that part of me would start to experience the world from Rodney’s point of view. I couldn’t decipher his exact thoughts, just general concepts. But, psychologically speaking, I didn’t encounter much unexpected. He thought about himself constantly, so it was a bit difficult to grab hold of his attention and divert it, but eventually I managed to inject an image of him having a threesome with Samantha Carter and Katie Brown, and I could tell it was successful when his pleasure center was stimulated.

“Well,” said Elizabeth, folding her arms satisfactorily, “that worked.”

“He got the message?” I clarified.

“Yes,” she said. “And now I think I need to part ways with you.”

“Oh,” I said. “Will I see anyone else I know?”

“I doubt you’ll run into anyone who’s still alive, or, well, partially alive,” Elizabeth said, “but as for the rest…it’s not for me to know.”

“Good luck with everything,” I told her. “I’m sure you have some exciting adventures ahead of you.”

“You don’t even know the half of it.” Then she was gone.

 

I felt the ground thunder under the horse’s hooves, the sun’s rays speckling my face with sweat, heard bird songs and smelled honey. I was no longer riding the horse. I was a part of it. And I knew I was going home.

 

I don’t know how much time passed, if you could even call what I did “passing time”. The stillness that pervaded my existence was calming. I felt no sense of urgency. I could do whatever I pleased, but I was constrained by having no body and no sense of place. Yet I didn’t mind any of it. I was happy, free, and felt accomplished.

I greeted my mother in a warm kitchen that smelled of blueberry muffins baking. She had told me that she and her own mother used to bake blueberry muffins in the summer, just like she and I made eggplant parmesan, so I thought it would be nice to welcome her with something familiar. Besides, she didn’t recognize me anyway. She thought I was her mother.

She looked older. She must have lived ten years after I died, yet I had not been graced with age. I could see her, really see the clearness in her eyes, and how she had come into her geriatric years with all the beauty I remembered seeing in her wedding photographs.

I let her eat as many muffins as she wanted, and she drank some lemonade, and then we played cards and talked about the friends she had made at school, because she was eight years old again. We scrubbed the kitchen together, although it didn’t feel like a chore at all. We splashed each other with bubbles that left no marks on our pristine clothes.

“Women’s work is never done,” my mother told me many times, as her own mother had told her.

It was true. I had hovered around Atlantis for quite some time, not sure where else to go, and while I couldn’t weave myself into the fabric of the city and observe everything, I caught glimpses of Jennifer Keller no longer afraid, wielding a gun; Samantha Carter never wavering in her leadership; Marie diligently staying by the doctors’ sides through every crisis, Elizabeth Weir ascending.

Some died, or left, but all of them left indelible and extraordinary contributions. I was proud to be one of them.

Our work was never done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
